Puzzles are my new favorite thing. 1,000 piece puzzles. I got into puzzles about six weeks ago (starting with this) and I just can’t stop. They have this hypnotic quality — I really don’t think about anything else when I’m working on a puzzle. I usually listen to classical music while I work which makes it twice as relaxing.
But anyway, puzzles. They are the greatest.
I took a writing class the other day and one of the exercises was to look around our room and find something to symbolize a challenge we are going through. And it was so simple but so surprising to me at the same time. Of course. A puzzle. I am searching through the hundreds of puzzle pieces for the one that fits. But more than that, I am putting together my own puzzle, the pieces of me. I am working on the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of myself, to put everything together, to integrate all of it, to become more whole. I am doing this both in order to withstand the challenge and because I think maybe this is the way out, what G-d wants me to do before I can get to the other side.
Then we had to find something in the room that could be the key to the challenge. And it struck me. My bottle of Mod Podge. It can’t solve the puzzle but it can hold it all together when it’s done. All these things I have worked on and am doing — the work on emunah, tefillah, physical well-being, relationships, emotional tools — these things are the glue. When my puzzle fits together at last, I will have a full bottle of tools and resources to make it strong, b’ezras Hashem.
